(Continued from page 238, vol. XLIX.)
These divinely warranted truths of the Christian faith are largely in our day despised and rejected, as the Saviour Himself was in the days of His flesh, and is still. The writer of a newspaper article on Dr. Baillie’s Broadcast address in May, 1944, lauds the ex-Moderator of
Assembly for dispensing with the theory of original sin. In either his own words or those of Dr. Baillie, he states:—”The message (of the Christian religion) is old but must ever be new. Its form and methods must be accommodated to the spirit of each age and clime, although in the nature of things it must always be a step behind, as we in Scotland know to our cost, looking round on the last lingering remnants of the stern and brutal creed of Calvin, which choke the springs of faith, and scare away those who would come to the well.“
Now the above judgment of the effect of Calvinism is contrary to the facts of history as recorded by the leading historians. For instance, J. R. Green, in his “History of the English People,” writing of the Puritans and their Calvinism, marks with admiration their “implicit obedience to the Divine will alone,” their “moral grandeur,” their “manly purity;”—and, again, “Home as we conceive it now was the creation of the Puritan” (Vol. III., p. 114). To them, Taine, a sceptic in religion, is constrained to bear the following testimony:—”Strict in every duty; attentive to the least requirements; disdaining the equivocations of worldly morality; inexhaustible in patience, courage, sacrifice; enthroning purity on the domestic hearth; truth in the tribunal; probity in the counting-house; and labour in the workshop” (History of English Literature, Vol. I., p. 473). Of Calvinists, J. A. Froude says:—”They abhorred as no body of men ever more abhorred all conscious mendacity, all impurity, all moral wrong of every kind so far as they could recognise it.” Again, he says:—”Calvinism was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth; the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish” (Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. II., pp. 55, 57, 58). History shows that Calvinism in practice results in a “right ordering of all the loyalties.” It is at their peril men reject, as the pamphlet, “The Youth Service Scheme in Scotland,” rejects, the guidance of Scripture and the verdict of history.
What our youth deeply need is their being preserved from a kind of Christianity and from methods of training which are obviously not in harmony with the revealed will of the Spirit of God. It is as the youth of our nation are instructed in His Word, and blessed with His presence that Christian ideals and citizenship can alone be attained. “Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”